Final Man

Note from Ian Snow -- Thanks to those who have stuck with me through the New Man/Fantasy Man series. If you haven't, it's recommended you read those first as this is a one-off epilogue to Fantasy Man and a finale for the characters of that universe. but it's not necessary. Enjoy.

* * *

"Dane proposed. We're getting married!"

Brooke's mind totally short-circuited at the news. Just bam, there went the lights, the Internet, everything. She blinked at the potted plant in the corner of her office. Its name was Turducken. Why she named it that, she had no idea.

Thinking about the plant meant Brooke wasn't thinking about her best friend and ex-girlfriend Sasha getting married.

Married.

Blink. Blink. There, the ol' mental batteries finally kicked to life.

"That's fantastic!" she said, trying to squeal. Wasn't that what she was supposed to do in situations like this? Go all high and Valley Girl on Sasha? How had she handled it when all her other friends got married? "Oh my God, I need details, I need details now!"

"Whoa there," Sasha said, laughing. "It was the most romantic thing at the most romantic resort. The sun was setting, there was this live band playing right on the edge of the beach, we were dancing. Then I realized the band was creeping closer and closer and they started playing our song."

"My Sharona?"

Sasha laughed again and sniffed. "Adele. And, and, and... Dane got down on one knee and I'm just blubbering the whole time, more water coming out of my eyes than there is in the ocean, and it was just... it was just so perfect."

Brooke picked up the chopsticks from her bento box and fought the urge to stab something. No, she was happy for Sasha, she really was.

But she was so tired too. Her entire adult life, she was the one who got hurt, and in some pretty wildly explosive ways, too. At eighteen her high school boyfriend of four years, who was supposed to go to college with her in the fall, who she thought was her everything, decided instead to get religion, date the pastor's daughter, and become a youth minister for what Brooke was fairly certain was a cult.

Then, in her freshman year of college came Chad, the hunky soccer stud, who made her feel like the only woman in the room, who would strum his guitar and nearly make her drench her panties -- and who cheated on her when she thought, again, she was his one and only. Fucking Chad.

In her later years of college came Kenny Kilton, the most infamous of her boyfriends. True, Kenny didn't exactly break her heart -- they were kinda sorta living together but that was about it -- but he was an asshole on a whole new level, nearly raping one of Brooke's best friends Jessica until an acquaintance stepped in and stood up to Kenny. A part of the coaching staff, he was thrown out of the school, his career ruined.

Oh. That acquaintance? Only the greatest guy Brooke had ever known.

Corbin Block was everything Brooke wanted in a guy. He was sort of geeky, quick to laugh at himself, kind, smart, and with Jessica's help, one serious stud. Jessica taught him everything from how to take care of himself to how to really treat a girl in bed. She even roped in Brooke to help out when it came time to teach Corbin how to eat a woman.

That had been the sweetest mistake.

Over the course of the school year, Brooke fell head over heels in love with Corbin while he and Jessica, in turn, fell madly in love with each other. Brooke and Sasha were frequent guests in their bedroom, but at the end of the day, it was always about Corbin and Jessica.

It would have been a lie to say Brooke didn't resent them that, but she tried to let her pain go in the years that followed. That relationship led to an even stranger situation, seeing her and Sasha become the girlfriends of a middle-aged playboy, his wife, and an army of beauties. Lionel was not Corbin. He was rougher, tougher, and well off. But he and Corbin shared one heartbreaking trait -- they were slavishly devoted to their closest loved ones, and Brooke, like with Corbin and Jessica, wasn't a part of Corbin's inner circle.

But.

Sasha, her college friend, had been right there with her, both through the phase with Corbin and the later one with Lionel. And while Corbin might have been Brooke's ultimate guy fantasy, Sasha was, hands-down, her very favorite woman in this entire universe. Her feelings for her friend were far from platonic. They did things together that would make an erotica writer blush.

Over their time with Lionel, Brooke came to realize a very simple fact, one that ripped open all sorts of old wounds. She loved Sasha. Unlike the great big unhealthy blaze of a bonfire that was her feelings for Corbin, Brooke loved Sasha at a slow simmer, one that warmed her whole spirit for years.

Brooke said the words "I love you" many times to Sasha throughout the years. They were as reflexive as "how was your day?" or "hand over the Cheetos," but they never talked about her actually loving Sasha in the way she truly did. Brooke tried to figure out how to show Sasha the real depth behind the words. She thought she had time. She didn't.

Sasha made the announcement one day at a gathering at Lionel's for brunch. She'd met someone, she said, Dane, and would be leaving the group. There were congratulations, laughter, tears. Brooke could work up nothing to say, smiling but struck speechless. Even afterward, when they walked home, Sasha asked Brooke about her thoughts and all she could do was say, "I've been thinking about moving anyways."

Brooke had, sort of. But it involved telling Sasha she loved her, then the two of them riding off into the sunset to... well, wherever would take a mediocre coach and a brilliant young professor.

Sasha looked stung by her response. Brooke shrugged off her attempts to draw her out and fled as fast as she could. She quit her coaching position at Agramonte High -- her pay sucked anyways. She accepted the first job that came along, teaching and coaching at a high school in Wisconsin. That lasted two terrible semesters. The kids were some kind of spectacularly awful and she hated it there. Brooke shifted careers, at least for the moment, and picked up a lower management position in a tech center. She spent her days stopping petty arguments between her employees, talking down irate customers, and most of all, trying to convince herself she'd done the right thing in leaving Agramonte and Sasha behind.

"That's amazing. I cannot wait to meet this guy," Brooke said.

"I hope you're serious, because that's what I want to talk to you about."

"Huh?" Brooke asked, more internal lights kicking back on after the total system shock of hearing the news. Thankfully, Sasha didn't seem to notice her disorientation, or had grown so used to it she just ignored it.

"I was thinking, Memorial Day's coming up, three-day weekend and all, why not come down and stay with us a few days? Or we could come up there. Or neutral territory."

Oh God, it would hurt to see Sasha again. Agramonte too. The suburb bordered a much bigger city but it had always been Agramonte that held her love. It was quirky, a little bit upscale, a little bit college town. It was a place she thought she could live in forever, but heartache won out.

But counterbalancing the pain of seeing Sasha and her favorite city was the burst of joy the thought brought about. Brooke's relationship with Sasha might be in the past, but they still had years of love and friendship between them, and of course she would come calling if Sasha wanted to see her. The happiness made the pain so very worth it, even if it was just a few days together and not the lifetime she wanted.

"I'd love to," Brooke whispered. She realized she'd whispered, then cleared her throat loudly. "Sorry. Damn frog in my throat."

"Yeah," Sasha said, a relieved laugh escaping her. "Same. So you'll come?"

A memory. Sasha, forehead to forehead with her as they were eaten out from behind by the sultry twins London and Dakota, panting, "Come, come, baby, come, your face is so beautiful when you do..."

Brooke shivered. Her mind told her this was a mistake, she'd just be hurt again, but her heart, the stupid thing, was always up for being kicked around. And unfortunately, Brooke's heart always won out over her mind. "Yes."

* * *

Sasha hung up, and twisted to look at the man in bed behind her. Dane was sprawled out, nude under the sheets. They'd made fervent love after she asked him the most important favor of her lifetime, the big no-turning-back favor, the one that could have ruined them.

The "honey, I'd like to try to entice my old college lover into coming and living with us because as much as I love you, you know I still love her too" favor. The one he'd listened to studiously in the near ten minutes it took to explain where her heart was at. The one he said yes to, so long as he still got to marry her and so long as they kept it between the three of them.

Sasha Windsor was marrying the greatest guy in the world. Period.

"She's coming?" Dane asked.

Unable to speak, Sasha nodded. She leaned in and kissed him, and he kept her there with his lean, muscular arms. His lips pressed to her forehead as she snuggled in tight against him. Her leg slid over his, and she reached around him, hugging as much of Dane as she could with her body and resting her head against his chest.

The bedroom used to be her mother's. Her father's too, Sasha supposed, but she hadn't really thought of the big house as belonging to him since he cheated on her mother. The furniture was all different, the curtains airier, and the lighting modernized, but it was still the same room where she would crawl into bed when she had a nightmare, where she would sit in front of her mother's vanity and wish with all her might she was as pretty as the older Windsor, where she would crash out and read side by side with her mom.

"My life kind of dominates this relationship, doesn't it?" she asked, brushing Dane's chest lazily.

"Have I ever complained?"

"No. Do you resent it at all?"

"Not a bit," Dane said. "But I do have one thing to ask. Sasha, I love you. Nothing you've ever asked me to do up until now could possibly break us apart."

"It won't. She won't."

He kissed the top of her head. "But it will change things, and I want a favor from you. Something big. If you and I aren't ever enough, you have to be the one brave enough to cut it off. Because I'd follow you like a lost puppy for the rest of my life otherwise."

Sasha shifted until she was on top of him, groin against his stomach. Dane was delightfully normally built compared to some of the other guys she dated. It wasn't that he was fat, far from it. It was that he was... comfortable. Just soft enough to be snuggly, but strong enough to lift her up by her butt and settle her on the kitchen counter before spreading her legs wide and taking her. His boyishly handsome face was made even cuter with his customary pair of thick-rimmed glasses. They made him look so much the part of the banker, which worked out well since that was what he did.

"I don't know how to convince you I don't love you any less because of her," Sasha murmured. "But I'll happily spend the rest of my life with you showing you."

"I'm looking forward to it. But... uh... this is going to be my first potential threesome and I have questions. Do we all sleep in the same bed? How does that work in the middle of the night when one of us has to go pee? Isn't the one in the middle super hot?"

Sasha burst out laughing, and leaned down to rain kisses on his cheeks, forehead, his lips.

* * *

Brooke did all right keeping her panic under control until she hit the state line. Memories, good and bad, flooded her. She had to pull over at the next rest area and take a walk around the car before her nerves settled. Five minutes turned into fifteen until she finally knew she had to go or lose the will entirely.

The plains had always seemed like a sea to her, with no end in sight until the suburbs. A few agricultural communities sprang up here and there, and she stopped again, this time for gas and therapy by chocolate malted balls. But eventually, the waves of grass gave way to twinkling sunlight scattered on metal and glass.

Amazingly, the fear she held about seeing the city again dissipated to plain and simple joy. She was on the opposite side of the city from Agramonte, but this whole place had been her stomping grounds. There on the outskirts was a gas station with the best cheap souvenirs. Half a mile later was the big cineplex Lionel's son Isaac loved. Closer to the heart of the city, every block held some beloved treasure of a memory she half-forgot.

With an early start, Brooke was hours ahead of schedule and decided to peel off for the college instead of Sasha and Dane's house. She still thought of it as Pamela Windsor's house, and flushed at the memory of her first time with the professor -- two of them, in fact. And Corbin. And Jessica. That... that had been a wild night. It was strange having hooked up with Sasha's mother on a number of occasions. Sasha was okay with it, and Pamela of course approved of Brooke with her daughter, but it was sort of a relief not to have to navigate that strange territory now that Pamela lived in Florida.

Sasha's house wasn't the only thing she inherited from her mother. Though they taught in different departments, Sasha requested Pamela's old office. Brooke drove to the building and spent a few minutes cruising the parking lots trying to find a space. A student in a Jeep finally pulled out near Sasha's office, and Brooke snuck in before anyone else could nab it. When she turned the car off, she dropped her forehead to the steering wheel, trying to charge up her courage one more time. Last chance to turn around. Last chance to not have her heart broken yet again.

"Hey. You. No loitering."

Brooke jumped out in a flash at the familiar voice. Sasha rushed to her from the sidewalk, grinning, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes already. Brooke was crying too, unable to put a voice to her sudden, overwhelming happiness.

Maybe she'd get hurt. But she had this moment, and that was enough for now.

* * *

They sat in Sasha's office. Brooke looked exhausted, and not just because she'd been on the road since six that morning. She had lost some of her toned definition and seemed frailer. Sasha's heart still did flip-flops seeing her, though, and it was hard not to stare like she was a bowl of ice cream Sasha wanted to lick up. She was pleased that Brooke seemed unable to break her gaze away from her too.

"Good trip?" Sasha asked.

Brooke kept staring at her, and didn't respond for a long minute. When she did, her voice was faint. "What? Oh. Yeah. Good. Good trip. Lots of... lots of... music."

"Music's good," Sasha said. She hitched in a breath, then gasped, "Oh, fuck it," and shot up to her feet. Brooke went for the door and slammed it shut so they had some privacy, but Sasha didn't care. Let the world have a show. She was back with Brooke, and life was right.

Brooke spun around just in time for Sasha to collide with her, pushing her back against the door and thumping her head against it none-too-gently. Brooke's giggle was cut short when Sasha kissed her, the age-old hunger for her blonde lover coming back with a vengeance. Her fingers dropped to Sasha's shorts. She worked open the button and shoved them down far enough to give her access to what she wanted.

Brooke's eyes lit her up in all sorts of delicious ways as Sasha slid her hand into her bikini briefs. Even as she cupped Sasha's ass, Brooke gasped, "Wait, Dane..."

"...knows," Sasha said, running her fingers through the length of Brooke's pussy and kissing her friend in between bursts of words. "Happy... you... meeting him... shut up and let me fuck you."

Brooke leaned her head back against the door and moaned as Sasha rubbed her cunt with fervent need. They knew the rhythms of each other so well. Sasha knew how much Brooke liked her outer lips teased, how soft she liked her clit played with. She barely grazed her friend's button with the heel of her hand now and then. The teasing drove Brooke wild, and she couldn't help arching up on the balls of her feet, biting her lip and closing her eyes.

"Oooh, Sasha, I missed you, oh my God, I missed you..."

"Me too, we're together..."

Brooke nodded, swallowing hard when Sasha filled her full of three fingers, then a fourth. "Oh fuck, oh God, you're going to make me come so fast, kiss me, please kiss me..."

Sasha did, their lips making softer music than her fingers in her friend's pussy. Brooke's eyes opened a hair and she began to rock, her climax really coming that fast. Sasha kissed her through it, taking in the air Brooke hiccupped out. Brooke whimpered as Sasha slipped her fingers free but the professor wasn't through yet. She pulled Brooke to her chair back behind the desk and pushed her down onto it. The thin carpeting wasn't much padding for her knees but she didn't care, dropping and chasing Brooke's wet cunt with her lips, her tongue.

Brooke gripped her hair, pulling her into her pussy. When Sasha delved deep with her tongue and slid it up to her sensitive button, Brooke leaned back so far she nearly spilled the chair backwards. Only Sasha's hands on the arms kept her from tilting. Brooke let out a shaky laugh, and Sasha grinned back before sucking and licking at her clit again.

Brooke didn't seem to come down the whole time Sasha licked her. Her body was so responsive, so needing of this. Sasha felt much the same way and she wanted nothing more than to drag Brooke home and ride her face. But she still had two classes for the day. More importantly? She didn't want to waste a second of that weekend. By the time Monday rolled around, she wanted Brooke to promise to become part of her life again. She wanted Dane to fall in love with Brooke the way Sasha had. She wanted Brooke to love Dane with a reflection of her own mad passion for her fiancé. And yes, okay, she wanted to see her two favorite lovers in the world together in just about every configuration the three could manage.

Sasha wanted all that, and though it seemed impossible, she would never give up on making her life complete. She let Brooke slip away once at the beginning of all this with Dane. As Sasha brought her friend to a second orgasm, she vowed she wouldn't make that mistake again.

* * *

Brooke sat in on Sasha's two classes, dazed and happy at first. She hoped she and Sasha might hook up that weekend but wouldn't have pushed if it meant hurting her boyfriend. If Dane knew, though, Brooke planned to take every moment to savor her best friend before packing up and going home.

A thought crossed her mind at the beginning of the second class, a dark one. Was she the weekend's entertainment to Sasha? Was she going to be some kind of prize for Dane for proposing? A weekend fling, a last blast before the wedding? Something like that?

Her mind hooked on the idea and wouldn't let it go. She worried about it the entire class, even as she watched Sasha in her element. The diamond ring on her finger kept drawing Brooke's eye. Conflicting waves of warmth and happiness for her friend and hollow envy of Dane crashed through her. You be happy for her, she told herself. She'd do the same for you.

When the class finally wrapped up and the students hurried out into the sunshine, Sasha hugged Brooke tight.

"God, I'm so glad to see you again."

"You too," Brooke said.

As they walked to their cars, Brooke took Sasha's hand in hers. Sasha smiled and squeezed it. Brooke looked aside at her shyly. "Is that all right?"

"Always. Hey, I was thinking we'd go out tonight for dinner. Frezza's maybe? I know how much you loved the place."